Education Bill

My Lords, I rise to support both amendments in this group. I will not go into detail because they have been beautifully set out by my noble friend Lady Jones. I must point out that in passing these clauses we will effectively be officiating at the funeral of the General Teaching Council. It would be quite wrong of me, as a former chairman, to allow that to happen without saying a few words about why it is a catastrophic mistake. It is not just a catastrophic mistake. I have absolutely no doubt that within 10, 15 or 20 years, this or another Government will come to the Dispatch Box and announce the creation of something remarkably similar to the General Teaching Council. The reason goes to the heart of the paradox that the Government have embraced in their approach to the teaching profession. Unless I misheard the Minister, he referred just now to the emergence of an outstanding generation of leaders, particularly in the teaching schools. I celebrate and support that. However, these are leaders of a very peculiar type: they somehow fall short of being allowed professional status. I am not sure that there is any other area of British public life where that is true: where we seek and promote outstanding leadership but refuse to acknowledge the professional status that ought to go with it. I do not for one moment defend the clumsy and frankly inadequate legislation that led to the creation of the General Teaching Council. It was not good enough and I and many others suffered from trying to make it work. However, it was a dream and an ambition that was worth while. In rejecting and scrapping it, the Government must acknowledge that they are flying in the face of the ambitions for the profession of every leading educationalist of the 20th century, from Sir Alec Clegg onwards. Every single educationalist sought, promoted and fought for professional recognition for teachers. There is a very simple line to draw. Skilled, professional teachers lead to well educated children, who in turn give us some hope of a successful society. The key is the skill of the professional teacher. The notion that you can have a successful education system without the wholehearted buy-in and support of the entire profession is a fantasy that all noble Lords in this Chamber would agree is unsustainable. We will not get the profession buying into educational reform and improvement until it comes to understand that it is just that: a profession. The disastrous mistake that my Government made was in ever contemplating the notion that we could have a professional body that was not paid for by the profession. I am afraid that what is happening here—it is a tough thing to say—is the infantilisation of the profession. We are scrapping its professional status because no one has the courage to say to the profession: ““Grow up, understand the responsibilities you have, understand that there is no possible success for this country unless a generation of brilliant teachers emerges, and understand that along with that responsibility comes the need to be professionals—and professionals pay for their professional status””. We will have something like the General Teaching Council. I hope it will be in my lifetime, but it may be after it. Today, I want to register the fact that this is a sad day for the profession, a sad day for the Government and a sad day for the future of education because, as I say, we will have to return to it. When we do so, I hope we will return to it in a more constructive spirit than the manner in which we are scrapping it.